Some eateries

Seoul is, of course, full of places to eat. There are many nook-like diners along the side streets. As one might guess would be the case in any cosmopolitan city, US franchises have invaded. There were lots of examples; because our friend Dan is a regular in the store in C’ville, one of the invaders we were tickled to see was Smoothy King (note the no parking sign in front of the car that parked in front of the shop just as I took the photo).

However, we spent our meal times at various other places. Here’s a little run-down, in chronological order, on some of the places where we ate.

Pat and the protest

Here we are in Seoul and, true to form, Pat found a protest.

Talks

For those who are interested in what I’ve been saying (about special education) while we’re here, I’ve posted an entry on Teach Effectively!.

Another temple

During free time on 21 June, We visited a marvelous temple at Ssanggye. Rather than creating a lengthy entry about it, I’ve written a page about the site; it includes links to photos.

Fan show

Upon arrival in Changwon, we settled into the Hotel Avenue (can’t find a Web site for it) and then strolled the neighborhood to find a snack and see what we could see. We elected to visit the nearby Sungsan Art Hall (slightly outdated info at this link) where we saw a juried show of paintings. In adjoining room a man beckoned to us to see a show of fans and kites.We were the only people in the room with ~50 objects on display. As I sat in a chair at the center of the room and looked about, the man engaged me in conversation. Although he wasn’t fluent in English, he had enough vocabulary and courage (much better than my Korean and mettle) to ask where we were from and how long we’d been in Korea. I asked him about the kites.

As we were about to leave, a young woman (Sally Kim, we think) came to the entry to the gallery and spoke with us in excellent English. She explained that the man with whom we’d spoken was one of the artists. Pat asked about her favorite fan in the show, and it turned out to be the work of the man hosting the show. He is Park Woo Yeoul and Mr. Park offered to pose with us at the fan Pat liked. So that’s how we came by this photo.

Ms. Kim explained that she’d studied eduation at SUNY Pottsdam and was in Changwon tutoring English. She passed on her e-mail address so that we could send Mr. Park a copy of the photo. I’ve sent it to Ms. Kim.

Hahoe Village

Thanks to Wi-Yung Kang and Kun Rhee, on 19 June we got a tour of a Hahoe village showing the traditional living situation of old Korea. The image here links to a set of other images about our tour of the village.

Deagu University

We took the KPX from Busan to Dong Deagu on 19 June to meet with Professors Kun-Yong Rhee and Wi-Yung Kang at Daegu University. They were wonderfully gracious hosts, getting us on the calendar of a top administrator at DU, securing a guided tour of a museum, feeding us a nice lunch, giving us a tour of DU’s Braille Library (an excellent facility for serving people with visual impariments or blindness), and then guiding us on a visit to Hahoe folk village. I hope to post a note about the visit to the folk village soon, but for this entry I focus on our time at DU.